We recently held the first of our new webinar series, Bringing Transparency and Effectiveness to the Whole Project Team. You can watch on demand right now at CxAlloy.com/media/20200211.
Join us for future webinars. Every month we will feature speakers from the commissioning and construction industry to share the ways they are using CxAlloy TQ to work faster and more effectively.
During the live event, we had a lot of great questions come in, but we didn’t have enough time to answer them all live. Afterwards, our speakers got together and wrote up answers to share below. If you have additional questions, contact us at support@cxalloy.com and we’ll be happy to help.
Is it possible to import fields like building, floor, area served, etc for equipment through an excel spreadsheet?
You can! To do so you would do two imports: one of spaces where you include the related floor and zones, and another of the equipment where you include the related space and area served. There is an exception here: we don’t yet support importing buildings, so you would have to create those directly instead of importing them. For more help on how to do this, contact support@cxalloy.com.
Area served is actually one of the new additions to importing that we recently rolled out. Other improvements include importing multiple systems for equipment, multiple zones for spaces, statuses for equipment and issues, and more. We will have more details about those improvements in an upcoming blog post about the latest release.
Do I get an email for every thing I’m assigned to?
If you have notifications turned on, you’ll be notified of every issue you’re assigned to, though you won’t necessarily receive a separate email for each assignment. When a lot of assigning happens within a couple of minutes (such as a batch assignment of issues) you’ll only receive a single email summarizing all the issues assigned to you.
Can the project manager require that issue forms contain the minimum information desired? That is, a new issue can’t be submitted otherwise.
The only required field when creating an issue is the Description.
Is there any plan to make the “Recommended Action” not show up as a comment but instead be part of the main definition of the issue? It’s often not seen when it’s just one of the comments.
We don’t have any plans for this currently, but we are open to highlighting or calling out the recommended action in some way. If you are a current user and would like to suggest this as a future upgrade, go to feedback.cxalloy.com.
During the webinar, John noted that they had seen a similar pattern in their projects, and now they just put any recommended actions into the issue description itself.
Is it possible to breakdown a particular project into different phases/buildings, etc. If yes can we run reports (open/close status for checklist) for a particular phase/building?
Yes! You can create buildings and then report by building across issues, checklists, tests, and equipment. For more help on how to do this, contact support@cxalloy.com.
Do the contractors get to set issue status?
If you give contractors the “Respond” permission for issues, they can change issue status – but only to statuses that you have not restricted. You can choose to restrict any status (like “Closed”) such that contractors can’t select it.
When generating a final commissioning report, how do you separate non-commissioning items when every company is involved and contributing to CxAlloy (issues, site observations, checklists, etc)?
The key here is to have some filterable values for these items. For example, for field observation reports you want to be sure that non-commissioning field observations are assigned a different field observation type.
During a discussion of this question in the webinar we noted that some filters were not available within the Report Generator; we have already developed an update that will add these missing filters and it will be released soon. For more details, contact support@cxalloy.com.
Is there an easy “Select All” feature for email distributions? Say I want to send the Open Issues Log out every Friday to the entire project team
When clicking the “Email” button there is not a Select All; however you can select companies and/or roles which will then include everyone within that company or assigned to that role. If you plan to regularly send emails out to everyone on the project you may want to export the People list and use that to create a list of those emails in your email program. For more help on how to do this, contact support@cxalloy.com.
Are there plans to offer a phone app for CxAlloy?
We currently offer an iOS app for both iPad and iPhone, which you can download from the App Store. We also have a Windows app in beta. If you would like to participate in the Windows beta, send a request to support@cxalloy.com. Later this year we will release an Android app.
The primary benefit of our apps over the web version is offline access. Data is synced when you are connected and then you can work offline and sync again when you get back online.
Can I duplicate ‘Meetings’ when creating a new project? Say I want to utilize the same agendas again?
Rather than duplicating meetings as part of project duplication, you can copy the minutes or agenda from any other project when creating a new minutes or agenda. Simply click “Copy” at the top right of the minutes or agenda page to do so.
Is there any limit to how much file storage we can use?
No! CxAlloy TQ does not limit the total file storage you can use. In addition, each file you upload can be up to 1 GB in size. If you think it’s useful for a file to be part of the project, upload it!
How can I get a list of checklist lines with different answers like NO, N/A or YES?
Every checklist can be exported as an Excel file or reported on as an attractive PDF. Both the export and PDF report will show line-by-line answers, including who marked the answer and when. If you need to get all checklist line data as part of some analysis or reporting, you would probably prefer to use Account Export. Navigate to the account management area and click “Export” in the menu (note: you must be an account admin to access account-level functions).
The account export enables exporting issues, issue comments, checklists, checklist lines, tests, test attempts, and test lines. You can export this data for all projects, active projects, or a specific project. You can choose either .csv (comma-separated values) or SQLite formats. For more help on how to do this, contact support@cxalloy.com.
Is it possible to email filtered issues to multiple parties? Example would be a project that the General Contractor wants to know when a subcontractor is assigned an issue.
Yes, when sending an email via the “Email” action you can set multiple recipients. For more help on how to do this, contact support@cxalloy.com.
Are you able to give a quick rundown of the box integration?
Our Box integration is targeted at a very specific use case: a customer that does not intend to use CxAlloy TQ’s file handling and instead wants to use Box. It allows replacing the “Files” area of a project with a selected folder from Box. For more information please email support@cxalloy.com.
Any recommendations for how to balance setting up a project with a good level of equipment detail but not creating something that is unmanageable?
This will be a topic in an upcoming webinar but here are some quick suggestions:
- Have a discussion with the project owner prior to starting about what equipment data is important to them, including what data they plan to track in the CMMS system after handover (and be sure to verify that the CMMS system they plan to use can accept the data). Don’t collect information that won’t be used.
- Don’t worry about putting placeholders in the equipment for everything you intend to collect. Instead, build those into your checklists and tests. The checklists and tests should reflect the information you plan to get (by asking for it in the checklists and tests) while the equipment should only reflect information you currently know (so equipment should have a lot more attributes at the end of the project than the beginning).
- Make use of CxAlloy TQ’s “Linked Attribute” feature so that you are gathering this equipment data as part of the completion of checklists and tests.
- Leverage CxAlloy TQ’s batch attribute actions to make mass changes to equipment data when needed (for example, add a “Manufacturer” value to a set of VAV’s that were missed during construction).
- Alternatively to batch attribute actions, use the “Update Existing” option when importing to update equipment data through an Excel import.
Regarding checklists: are they built into the software and I need to customize them to my project or do I have to develop them?
Every account starts with ~15 checklist templates and ~15 test templates. These are templates for common equipment (AHUs, chillers, boilers, etc.) and based off best practices as defined by the industry’s trade organizations. They are yours to use, to modify, or to delete (we won’t be offended).
You can of course create your own templates and we anticipate that most customers will, if not immediately, in time expand beyond the initial templates we provide.
Can we get a copy of this presentation recording or link to it?
You can watch on demand right now at CxAlloy.com/media/20200211.
Can a PDF of a floor plan be imported so that you know where you are in the building and what you have photographed is part of (xyz) here on the floor plan?
You can attach any kind of file to items in CxAlloy TQ, so you could easily attach a floor plan to an issue, equipment, or location. With our recently announced “Markup” feature you can also annotate the drawing to draw attention to specific areas.
In your example, you could create an issue, take a photo, attach a PDF of the floor plan, and then circle the specific area on the floor plan. The resulting PDF report would show the photo and circled area of the floor plan.
Can progress reports be costumized to show progress by discipline or assigned to?
Not currently. Invariably there are features that we do not yet offer; I would encourage you and anyone else to use our feedback platform for feature requests so that other CxAlloy TQ users can vote and comment on your feature suggestion.
If you need additional questions answered or just want more details, contact us at support@cxalloy.com. We look forward to seeing you next month.